


You Wrap Your Arms Around Me

by MoanDiary



Series: Concessions [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Awkward Boners, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Loss of Virginity, Season/Series 05, Sexual Content, Speculation, Spoilers, Wholesome Hug Content, Wingfic, Wings, probably totally mischaracterizing Darkwing Duck over here, the fourteen-billion-year-old virgin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:00:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25352044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoanDiary/pseuds/MoanDiary
Summary: Michael has a crisis of faith. Ella, like,totallygets it.
Relationships: Ella Lopez/Michael
Series: Concessions [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913482
Comments: 37
Kudos: 272





	You Wrap Your Arms Around Me

The first time, she thinks he’s his brother, of course.

“This doesn’t mean I’m not still mad at you,” she whispers fiercely, her face pressed against Michael’s chest, her arms disconcertingly strong given her stature. He barely resists throwing her off him as her grasping hand slides a little closer to where his bad wing lies hidden, muscles spasming from the effort it takes to stand up straight.

“My apologies, Ella,” he says smoothly after a brief moment casting about for the woman’s name, patting her awkwardly on the back.

She draws back immediately, a puzzled expression on her face. “We’re finally on a first name basis, huh? You trying to butter me up after _leaving_ for six months without even saying _goodbye?_ ” She punches him gently in the shoulder.

He kicks himself for the mistake. That’s right, the male detective is “Douche,” or “Daniel” if he’s feeling generous. The female detective is “Detective,” or “Chloe” in intimate moments. But this small, excitable forensic scientist is only ever “Ms. Lopez,” for some reason. _Lucifer and his tedious fixation on names and titles_ , he thinks, exasperated.

“What can I say? I’ve returned from my business trip a changed man,” he says with a grin. That seems to be enough for her, and she embraces him again.

“Well, I’m happy to see you, even though you’re squirmy as ever.”

There’s a knock on the doorframe. He releases Ella immediately, though she gives him one extra squeeze before stepping back, a fond smile on her face. Chloe Decker peers into the lab, her blue eyes sharp and fixed on him. There’s something about her gaze that makes him nervous, despite how confident in his illusion he is, like she can see straight through him.

“Ian Mackie’s brother was just brought in for questioning. Do you wanna join me, Lucifer?”

“Ah, unfortunately I have some business to attend to at Lux,” he says smoothly, stepping back from Ella and tugging on his cuffs. He’s still dreading the day when he’ll have to figure out a good excuse for not being able to draw out humans’ desires. Not something he wants to deal with yet, when he’s barely comfortable remembering the right names.

She nods a few times, eyes narrowing. “Okay, sure. I’ll text you if there are any leads.”

“Excellent!” he replies, sweeping past her. 

He feels both women’s eyes burning into his back as he walks away.

* * *

It’s been millennia since there were heavenly armies to lead or evil to be vanquished. Lucifer’s rebellion was the last of those battles, and the struggle before his brother’s final Fall left Michael with one wing barely functional and constant pain. He spent the thousands of years since then in charge of weighing souls. All who made it to Heaven were unburdened by guilt, but not all were exactly saints. Some were. There were people who died to save others.Those who spent their lives laboring in service to mankind or the planet. There were the meek and the merciful and the peacemakers and all that.

Then there were the pure ones—children who died before their time, mostly, but also those with childlike minds, who never discovered guilt or shame.

But then there were those who were guiltless purely by virtue of living unexamined lives. The selfish, the greedy, the brutal. All those who never spared much of a thought to the effects of their actions. Many of those had left considerable destruction in their wakes. And some simply lacked a conscience to give them the guilt they deserved. Sociopathic serial killers, genocidal tyrants, religious zealots—he’d think them mistakes, if it weren’t sacrilege. God did not make mistakes.

All of these souls Michael considered in turn, recorded, and assigned to a particular district of the Silver City. Some would receive the bare minimum of what Heaven could provide, while others deserved greater rewards, special treatment. His brother, he knew, performed much the same function in Hell, doling out special punishments to those who deserved it more. And despite the pain his brother caused him during the rebellion, and the pain it still caused him daily, he was at peace with this well-balanced system. Him in Heaven, his brother forever his equal and opposite reflection in Hell, each bringing an additional element of justice to Father’s perfect system of human self-determination.

That is, until the day that Charlotte Richards appeared in Heaven. She stood next to Amenadiel before his desk and shamelessly announced how happy she was “not to have ended up back downstairs, if you know what I mean.” Michael turned to Amenadiel, affronted.

“You influenced her path?”

His older brother looked down at his scuffed human shoes. “Well, Luci and I did. She didn’t deserve to end up there.”

“I can’t believe I have to say this to you, of all people, brother, but that’s _not for us to decide._ ”

Amenadiel fixed him with an exasperated look. “Well, she’s here now.”

And so she was. And things settled down, for a short while. Then, one day, Eve—Heaven’s oldest human resident—traipsed past his desk near the gates. He did a double take. Never had he seen a human walking _away_ from his post before.

“Where are you going?” he called after her, climbing awkwardly to his feet, his lame wing pulling him off balance as usual.

She turned back with a mischievous grin on her face. “Down to Earth to visit your brother!” she announced, as if that were a done thing. As if a human soul could just... _leave_.

He went immediately to petition Father, to receive some kind of guidance or explanation for this extraordinary event, but his questions were met, as always, with silence. He walked in the gardens reserved for the angelic host for a long time, contemplating. He’d believed for all those many years that the system was just because it had rules. Because it treated all humans equally. Because a perfect God could not create an imperfect system. But if angels and humans could break the rules without any repercussions...the entire structure crumbled. There was no justice, he realized. No order. Nothing separated them from chaos but belief in a deity who was now entirely absent. And without that belief, he had...nothing. He was a general without an army. A judge without laws. A crippled warrior with no one to fight. 

And it was all Lucifer’s fault.

Lucifer, cavorting with his human companions and blithely destroying Michael’s life even now, even from another dimension. So when his twin finally returned to Hell, a plan began to take form in Michael’s strategist’s mind. If Lucifer could take everything from Michael, Michael could take everything from him.

His deception didn’t last as long as he hoped it would. He never remembered Amenadiel being half so canny, but apparently Lucifer and his Earth-bound brothers’ motley crew of strikingly clever humans (and demon) had been rubbing off on him. Soon Lucifer returned and unmasked him, and he finally had the opportunity to air his grievances with his twin, largely in the form of punching. It wasn’t half as satisfying as he’d hoped it would be.

With nothing else to do or say, and with Lucifer splitting his time between his Earthly home and his infernal throne, Michael could and probably should return to the Silver City. But he finds the prospect entirely unappealing. He’ll still be purposeless. Still plagued by the knowledge that it’s all a sham.

And beyond that, Earth is just so much more _exciting_ than Heaven. Humans live and change and grow at lightning speed. They struggle against adversity after adversity. He finally understands why first Lucifer and now even staid old Amenadiel are so enamored of it. Without the pretense of being Lucifer and the fairly interesting police work that entails, though, he has little to occupy his time besides observing humans as they go about their lives, often from the high vantage of the apartment Lucifer offers him above Lux, albeit below Lucifer’s far better-appointed penthouse, of course. In the evenings, he sometimes descends into the nightclub to listen to his brother serenading the adoring masses. It reminds him of days he’d long forgotten, when Lucifer would spin sweet songs into existence for no other reason but to delight Michael. That ended long before humanity dragged itself out of the primordial sludge. Long before Lucifer found that man delighted in him far more than his family.

Michael usually passes those evenings alone at the bar, brooding and silent. Aside from the occasional drunken reveler who briefly mistakes him for his twin, the humans seem to know to steer clear of him. And though Lucifer’s friends make frequent appearances, they’re just that—Lucifer’s friends. Most don’t seem to know what to make of him, his brother’s surly shadow.

On one particular night, Lucifer ends his set soon after Chloe Decker arrives in a very tight, very short red dress, practically jogging to the elevator and dragging her behind him as she laughs and protests. Michael has turned to sit with his back to the room, facing the bartender, who seems to know to always keep his drink full, when he feels a tap on his shoulder.

“Hey,” a woman’s voice says in his ear, almost shouting to be heard over the din of the music and chatter.

“Sorry, I think you’ve mistaken me for my brother,” Michael says automatically, not bothering to look.

“No, I haven’t. You’re Michael, right?”

He turns to find Ella Lopez standing beside him in a sparkling dress, her long, dark hair loose and cascading over one shoulder, arms crossed.

“Oh. Ms. Lopez,” he says.

“You know, I don’t appreciate being lied to. Lucifer told everyone at the precinct that it was you impersonating him, when he first came back. Which was actually when you came back. Er, arrived.” She gives him a stern look, somewhat undercut by the fact that she seems to be a little intoxicated already.

“Sorry about that,” Michael mutters, raising his glass to his lips. “It was really just a family argument. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Listen, I have four brothers. I get it.” She slides onto the barstool next to him and the bartender immediately places a large, elaborate, fruit-laden cocktail in front of her with the special deference and expediency reserved only for Lucifer’s closest friends. “You get mad, try to pull a prank as revenge, and it escalates before you know it. But using innocent bystanders as tools? You gotta know that’s not right.”

He ducks his head, surprised at the surge of shame that runs through him, then stands abruptly, bad arm sliding from where it rests on the bar to fall to his side. “I won’t trouble you anymore. Again, my apologies.”

“Hey, wait. I didn’t mean to scare you off!” She protests, standing as well and catching him by his wrist. “I just wanted to meet you for real. You’re Lucifer’s twin, after all. I’m sure you have a lot of embarrassing stories about him to tell. You know I _gotta_ hear me some of those.”

She stands back and extends her right hand, then glances down at his, and extends her left hand instead. He shakes it. “I’m Ella Lopez, nice to meet you. You can call me Ella instead of Ms. Lopez, by the way. Lucifer’s the only person other than the lady at the DMV who calls me that, and I’m pretty sure Marlene is starting to come around.”

“Michael Demiurgos,” he says.

She grins and draws him into a quick hug. “See, was that so hard? Now we’re friends.”

He’s not sure what to say to that. He knows the bonds of family and duty well...but friendship? 

Ella seems unfazed by his baffled silence. “Lucifer, Michael, Amenadiel...your parents really knew how to stick to a naming convention, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

She sits in the normally empty barstool beside him for most of the night, chatting about what seems like everything under the sun. He asks questions or makes comments when she seems to run out of steam, but otherwise she doesn’t seem to expect him to carry the conversation equally, which he appreciates. Occasionally she’ll slip away to dance with her friends—the demon Mazikeen and Lucifer’s therapist, Linda, whose incisive, knowing gaze makes him uncomfortable. After asking him once if he’d care to join them, and his emphatic refusal, Ella doesn’t ask again. Dancing and music, light and desire—these are his brother’s things. They’re like an ill-fitting suit on him. 

But watching Ella Lopez’s shimmering attire sparkle as she moves under the strobing dance floor lights, he finds himself wishing they weren’t.

* * *

“Hey, stranger! Fancy seeing you here!” Ella exclaims. Lucifer’s twin sits beside Chloe’s empty desk, tapping his fingers impatiently on his knee. At first she was totally fooled by their resemblance, but now that she’s seen him out of his Lucifer costume a few times, the differences between them are clear. It’s not just in Michael’s slightly quirked posture or the stiff way he holds his right arm. It’s something in the tightness of his face. His expressions are smaller than Lucifer’s, his eyes sharper. He holds everything closer to the vest, while Lucifer’s big puppy dog expressions announce his feelings to the world.

“Ella,” he acknowledges with a nod.

“You here for your brother? I think he and Chloe are out at a crime scene right now.”

“I can wait.”

“Want any company? You’re welcome to hang out in my lab.”

“No.”

“Suit yourself.”

She shrugs and returns to work, but can’t help glancing through the window every couple of minutes to find him still there, still frowning at nothing in particular.

After another half hour, she stops next to him again on the way to the breakroom to refill her coffee.

“You don’t have a book or a phone or anything?”

He rolls his eyes, having the audacity to act like she’s interrupted him when he was literally doing nothing at all. “The only people I might need to contact on Earth are my brothers, and I can just pray to them if I need to tell them something.”

Ella chortles. “Haha, I get it, because you’re an angel and your brother is the devil. No really, though.”

Michael’s exasperated stare doesn’t waver.

“O-kay, so you’re both into the method thing. That’s fine. I guess even Lucifer didn’t have a smartphone back when I first met him. But my dude, they’re great.” She drags Chloe’s desk chair next to his and plops down into it, pulling out her phone. “What do you wanna see? Social media?”

He shakes his head. “No one I care to socialize with.”

“News?”

“Not my concern.”

“How about games? There are tons of games.”

“Mindless distractions. A schedule of meaningless, predictable rewards meant to prey on the weak-minded.”

“What about videos? You can watch about five hours of me jumping onto inflatable pool toys on Wobble.”

He pauses a moment at that, seeming to consider it before deciding. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Okay, Mr. Sophisticated, is there _anything_ you find interesting?”

He gazes off into the middle distance thoughtfully. “Mathematics,” he says finally.

“Ohh, have I got the thing for you, then.” She types furiously for a few moments. “There’s this whole group for mathematicians who like to write proofs of totally _loco_ premises that are all actually logically sound. They’re super mind-bending and awesome. Look…”

She holds her phone in front of him and slowly scrolls through the first proof. He leans in closer as he reads it, a smile gradually stretching across his face. After they read through the first three, her arm starts to tremble from holding the phone at an awkward angle for so long, and he steadies her hand with his. It’s large and warm and she lingers for maybe a few beats too long before giving the phone to him and withdrawing her hand. He doesn’t seem to notice.

He’s enthralled until he gets to the bottom of the page, swiping up over and over as the webpage rubberbands back repeatedly. “How do I see more?” he asks, thrusting the phone back at her.

“Hold your horses, Mike. Let me show you how Google works.”

He’s a quick study and soon is hungrily scouring the web for other proofs. Ella smiles and returns to her lab, only glancing out occasionally to see that he’s still engrossed until she hears Lucifer’s voice.

“What’s so interesting on that phone, brother? Porn?” Lucifer snatches her phone from his twin’s hand and peers at it, expression almost immediately contorting in disgust. “An academic paper on irrational numbers? You pervert.”

When Michael comes into the lab to return her phone a few minutes later, he gives her a rare smile, stubbled cheeks dimpling and dark eyes glittering.

“Thank you. I enjoyed that more than I expected to. Maybe next time I’ll watch some of your—what was it? Pool toy videos?”

His fingers linger against hers for a few extra milliseconds as he gives her the phone again, and even after he leaves, it feels like her whole hand is sparking with little electric tingles.

“Oh boy,” she mutters.

* * *

There is, somewhat to her surprise, actually a next time. Lucifer, Chloe, Michael, Amenadiel, and Maze seem to have some kind of unofficial case of their own they’re working. She’s more than a little hurt that they don’t trust her enough to involve her, but apparently it’s a family thing for the brothers. Private. Only spoken about in weird semi-religious code. “Dad” is often mentioned in ominous tones.

Whatever the case is, it must be pretty grim. They spend a lot of time in the conference room with the shades drawn, and frequently one or more of them will storm out. Most commonly either Lucifer or Michael. Lucifer usually goes outside to smoke. Michael usually comes into her lab to fume. Occasionally she’ll be able to wheedle him into talking, or say something ridiculous enough that he laughs, but there’s usually only one cure to what ails him. One thing that Ella finds is the cure to most problems of an emotional nature.

* * *

“Come ‘ere, big guy,” Ella murmurs, and slides her arms around his waist for what must be the hundredth time. He has long since stopped hesitating to embrace her in return. He has long since stopped denying the curiously pleasant sensation of pressing her small body against his. He sometimes wanders into her lab even when he has no real reason to be here. Being around her just makes the world...brighter, somehow.

One of her hands strokes in soothing circles against the tense, knotted muscles under his right shoulder, and he marvels at the fact that it doesn’t even make him flinch, now. She’s so...so purely good. He breathes in deep the light, flowery smell of her hair, and on the exhale, all the tension drains out of him. He sags a little against her and she giggles, sliding a foot back to brace his weight.

“Why do you insist upon doing this to me?” he mumbles into her hair.

“You always seem like the person in the room who needs a hug the most,” she replies, a smile in her voice. “Used to be Lucifer, but you’re definitely the champion now.”

He closes his eyes and thinks about her infectious cheer and blinding smile. She is quite beautiful, this baffling human woman, from her skin down to her soul. His heart thumps heavily in his chest. The room feels suddenly warm. Unconsciously, his fingertips press a little harder into the soft flesh of her side. Her slowly circling hand slides a little lower, grazing the small of his back, meeting a muscle that’s unexpectedly sensitive, perhaps, that makes him jolt forward with a gasp.

His hips press into her belly and he feels a rush of pleasure. His groin is unusually tight and heated and...hard? 

“Oh, hel-lo, there,” Ella giggles. “I’m happy to see you, too, Mike.”

He pulls back. She looks up at him from under her dark lashes, her expression mirthful but uncommonly flushed. They look down in unison. 

He has an erection. Certainly not something he’s ever had to deal with before. He makes his mumbled excuses and hurries awkwardly into the men’s room. It’s blessedly empty, and he slams the door of the last stall shut behind him, staring down at his bulging trousers and begging his overenthusiastic genitals to calm down.

The door to the bathroom slams open, and he hears the calm click of shoes on the tile.

“Hiding a stiffie in the precinct restroom, Mikey?” comes Lucifer’s voice. “I’ve certainly been there.”

“Must you?” Michael grits out.

“I really must,” Lucifer replies. “You and Ms. Lopez are very close these days, aren’t you?”

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

Lucifer kicks open the door of his stall and stares at him, hellfire burning in eyes that look just like his own. “Her happiness most certainly is my business,” the Devil growls. “If you hurt her—”

“You’ll do what?” Michael gestures to his weak side. “You’ve already crippled me.”

“Oh, but you still have a whole wing left!”

Michael almost lunges forward to wrap his hands around his brother’s throat but thinks the better of it at the last moment. He closes his eyes and breathes out slowly. _He’s testing you,_ he thinks. _Don’t give him the satisfaction._

“Ella is fully capable of making her own decisions. If she _desires_ to spend time with me, do you think I should deny her?”

Lucifer’s expression softens, eyes fading back to their normal brown. “Just—promise me you won’t lie to her. About what you are. About what _we_ are. She deserves to know the truth before she becomes too...involved. Believe me, you don’t want that hanging over your head.”

Michael nods stiffly.

Lucifer clears his throat, then claps him on the shoulder, looking down pointedly. “Well, that fun conversation seems to have remedied your pocket rocket problem, eh? Let’s get back to work.”

* * *

Michael is a bit like a large stray cat, Ella decides. It took a long time to earn his trust, and even longer to convince him to sit beside her on her couch, but now that she has, she’d be hard-pressed to get rid of him. Not that she wants to. She likes having his steady, sardonic presence around. He’s almost as good a listener as Lucifer when she gets excited about a factoid she learned or a new show she’s watching, and always has a droll comment at the ready. With his penchant for cashmere turtlenecks and earth-toned blazers, and his hair always a little disheveled, he reminds her a bit of the vaguely handsome, aloof, and extremely knowledgeable Trace Evidence Analysis professor on whom she had a _tragic_ crush in college.

And beyond that, he’s honestly kind of a sweetheart. She accumulates a steadily growing collection of gifts from exotic, far-flung locales that always tie in to something she said offhand, mid-rant. Often something she doesn’t even remember talking about by the time he gives her the gift. He’ll remind her, in those cases, reciting her words exactly with a shy, crooked smile.

“Michael! That’s so sweet!” she gushes, pecking a kiss on his cheek. He huffs and blushes and rolls his eyes like he’s above that kind of sappiness, but she can tell he likes it.

She’s been slowly moving her kisses closer to his mouth and so far he doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. In fact, she catches him turning a little to bring her closer more often than not. Despite the occasional hard-on during lingering hugs or late-night cuddling on the couch while watching TV, he seems as wary of sex as his twin is enthusiastic about it. She thinks it has something to do with his injured side, and a deep-seated fear of being compared to his brother. And it’s pretty obvious that if she wants something to happen, she’s gonna have to make the first move.

Because, somehow, this odd, lonely bird of a man seems to have become her boyfriend, though neither of them have said that aloud. Her tiny Los Angeles apartment, with its bathtub wildlife and its shelves overflowing with books, just feels more like home with him there. Washing her dishes, or reading, or more often than not, sleeping on her couch. She can’t help but wonder if he sleeps anywhere else. The one time she asked about it, he gave her a sardonic smile and said, “I like sleeping here. I know you’ll always make enough of a racket to wake me up if there’s trouble,” which isn’t really an answer at all.

Michael’s especially exhausted on days when he spends more time with his brothers. Something about Lucifer in particular seems to wear him out, and there’s always extra stiffness in his posture when he ends those days on her couch.

This evening he falls asleep before nine in the middle of an episode of _Deep Space Nine_ , stretched out full length on the couch, turned on his side. His right arm dangles awkwardly onto the floor and when Ella goes to drape a blanket over him, she gently picks it up to place it on the cushion in front of him.

He groans, his entire arm spasming as she moves it, and she lowers it again carefully. She feels along the muscles of his right shoulder and the knots and tightness she finds are straight-up _gnarly_. _Has this guy_ ever _seen a physical therapist?_ She wonders, not for the first time, about the origin and nature of his crooked posture. Is it a birth defect? An injury from a car accident, maybe? College sports? Sometimes he alludes vaguely to a war. Maybe he was in the army? She’s hugged him enough times to know that it must be something really deep down, because he is—to her objective, purely scientific eye, of course—possessed of just as flawless and perfectly symmetrical a body as his twin. 

She can’t help but press her thumb into one of the biggest knots on his back, working it in tight little circles. He moans something indecipherable and shifts in his sleep, but doesn’t rouse. Ella slides her hand a little further towards his spine, finding another tight spot to work out, then another. By the time she reaches the little dip to one side of his spine, she’s digging in with both thumbs, pressing hard and then—

—She’s launched half-way across the room by something huge colliding explosively with her chest. Her lounge chair mostly breaks her fall as she and it both tumble ass-over-teakettle onto the floor of her apartment. Dazed, she registers her downstairs neighbor, Mr. Hakim, banging on his ceiling with a broom handle and yelling at her to “stop stomping around.”

She sits up slowly and peers over the lounge chair to find an honest-to-God _angel_ sitting up on her couch, looking confused. Michael tenses when he meets her eyes, expression tightening defensively.

“I guess a ‘Be not afraid’ is in order,” he says.

“Michael,” she breathes. “Lucifer’s brother, Michael. Lucifer’s brother, the archangel Michael. Because of course you’re not both method actors. That... _that_ would be crazy.” She feels hysterical laughter bubbling up inside her chest and snaps her mouth shut to keep it in. She thinks she might have always known, somehow. Her rational mind wouldn’t let her acknowledge it, but she knew, she knew it was real—

He gives her a smile that’s really more of an apologetic grimace. “I’d hoped to tell you some other way,” he says. His eyes flick nervously towards his right wing and he folds the two massive, dark-feathered appendages closer to his back. Or at least, he tries to. The right one doesn’t seem like it wants to obey him. In fact, the closer she looks at it, the more she realizes it’s very damaged, hanging slack where the other curves up in a taut arc, feathers splayed out where they should lay in a smooth line. She gets to her feet.

“So...that’s where the trouble is, huh?” she asks, the size and scope of the massive theological panic she’s going to inevitably have fading in the presence of a hurt friend.

He glances at his wing accusingly and it twitches, again trying to fold to match the other but failing. “It’s an old injury,” he says simply. “I’m used to it.”

“Still looks like it was más too más painful, though, buddy.” She is reminded of the injured robins and sparrows she and her brothers used to find lying on sidewalks—wings broken, the victims of deceptive plate glass windows—and take home in shoeboxes to nurse back to health. This is the same principle, she guesses, just on a much larger scale. She approaches him slowly, since he seems on the verge of bolting, palms spread in a gesture of goodwill. He eyes her cautiously, his posture coiled tight as a spring. 

“Do you mind if I look at your wings?” She reaches out a hand and he flinches backwards. She’s reminded of how those injured birds seemed to never be able to understand that she was trying to help them, even after weeks of being hand-fed earthworms and crickets in a warm, safe environment. 

She holds up her hands again, and he relaxes marginally. “Purely interested from a scientific perspective. They’re _super_ cool. How do you take off? It doesn’t look like they’re actually big enough to lift you in terms of normal aerodynamics. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not exactly hollow-boned. Jiminy Christmas, those primary feathers are huge. Where do they go when they’re not out? Are they different from, like, eagle feathers?”

Before she’s even realized it, she is crouching down to get a closer look at one of the massive, pointed feathers on his right wing, gently running her fingers down it and watching, fascinated, as the ruffled, separated barbules zip together. She turns to the next feather beside it and does the same thing to it, then the same to the next. “Sweet,” she breathes, watching as the smoothed feathers twitch and settle like they have a life of their own.

He makes a choked sound, and she pulls back her hands, glancing up at him guiltily. He’s watching her with a raw, almost pained expression.

“I’m not hurting you, am I? Sorry if I got carried away.”

“You’re not hurting me,” he says, voice tight. His eyes flit away from hers and his tanned cheeks darken. “You can...you could keep going, if...if you’d like.”

She smiles, brain still racing and reeling with the onslaught of thoughts as she continues to straighten his feathers. She’s preening a literally honest-to-God angel in her living room now? When last year she was ninety percent certain the Big Guy in the Sky didn’t exist at all?

But he’s not Saint Michael descending from the heavens to slay evil monsters in a blaze of glory, he’s just her friend Lucifer’s grumpy twin brother, who gave her an intricately painted Greek amphora (that she now suspects might date back to _Ancient_ Greece) all because she went on an excited rant about things archaeologists find in ancient shipwrecks while they were out getting souvlaki one day.

She stands and rests her hand gently on the leading edge of his damaged wing, and can feel it trembling, whether from strain or tension or fear or something else. His dark eyes are inscrutable and roiling with some barely suppressed emotion as they stare down at her. She smooths the short feathers beneath her hand absently. He sucks in a quick breath and then, for the first time, reaches out to pull her into an embrace of his own. She goes readily, hands sliding under the mantle of long, silken feathers that trail down his back. A heartbeat after his strong arms enfold her, there’s a rustling and a sudden dimming of the ambient light, and she realizes his wings are wrapped around her, too. They’re alone together in a dark, feathery cocoon of his own making.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m kind of freaking out,” she mumbles against his chest.

He stiffens. “Did I do it wrong?”

“There’s no wrong way to do a hug, Mike.” 

He relaxes again. “Ah. Good.”

“You know you’re kind of a big deal in, like, all of Judeo-Christian religion, right?”

“I suppose.”

“And you’re in my living room.”

“Mmhm.”

“And you have a boner. Again.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure how to make that stop happening.”

“You know, there are more ways to address the situation than just, you know, thinking about cold showers and _Angels in the Outfield_.”

He swallows heavily, but when she looks up at him his gaze is heated and there’s a bit of an intrigued smile playing around his lips. She stands up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to them. He hums into her mouth and responds cautiously but surprisingly sweetly before abruptly pulling back and fixing her with a narrow-eyed stare.

“You and my brother haven’t...you know…”

“Done it? Ah, no. I mean, one time he did offer to do it on a skeezy mattress at a crime scene, but other than that…”

“Disgusting.”

“Yeah, I didn’t really even consider it,” she says faintly, not meeting his eyes.

“I haven’t. Ever. With anyone.”

“You haven’t what? Oh,” she says, realization dawning. “ _Oh._ Cause you’re an angel.”

He clears his throat, uncomfortable. “Historically, I’ve spent most of my time with my family.”

She laughs, an edge of hysteria creeping back in as she considers what that means. With his family, in Heaven. Which is a real place. That she may or may not end up going to after she dies. “Yeah, I see how that could make it hard to find an opportunity to…”

“Right.”

She looks up at him coyly. She’s used to dry spells, but spending so much of her time being chastely physically affectionate around someone who looks like _him_ would be a strain on anyone in possession of eyes and a libido. “Well I’m up for it if you are.” She looks down pointedly at his tented trousers.

“Oh, you mean now?”

She looks up, not without some apprehension, at the wall of charcoal-gray feathers around them. “In for a penny, in for a pound, I always say.”

He kisses her this time, pressing his mouth into hers hard, but not moving, really, like he’s not sure what to do next. Ella guides him slowly, moving her lips against his until he copies her, then opening her mouth and pressing forward with her tongue until he opens his. He groans when their tongues meet, a deep rumble that shoots all the way down to her toes. His hands grip her hips, pressing her against him and lifting her slowly—not with the exertion of a human lifting up another human, but with the smooth ease of raising a glass of water or a ballpoint pen, like her weight is inconsequential.

“Holy moly,” she gasps, lips breaking away from him. He holds her so they’re at eye-level, his heated gaze darting between her eyes and her mouth.

“Where should we do this?” he pants.

“Bedroom, probably.” She eyes his wings. His posture seems a little straighter and his right arm stronger now, like he has to work to compensate for his right wing less with it hanging free. “Are you more comfortable with them out or in?”

“Ah,” he blushes darker. “Out, if possible.”

“Then the bedroom, probably, although getting you through the door may take some tetrising.”

He sets her back on her feet and she takes his hand, threading him and his wings through her apartment and into the bedroom, which he needs to turn sideways to enter. The room’s just barely wide enough to accommodate him, both wings folded as close to his body as he can get them, the right still sticking out far more than the left.

They face each other near the foot of her bed, and she nervously starts stripping, the reality of what she’s about to do starting to sink in. Taking the virginity of an unimaginably old and unimaginably hot angel. It’s nothing. Totally normal. Not at all something to be worried about.

He scrambles to follow suit, pulling his turtleneck off over his head. His turtleneck, which somehow _phases through his wings_. She forgets her panic abruptly, staring at him in wonder. “Okay, you have gotta tell me how that works after.”

“You must let me keep _some_ secrets.” He grins, unbuttoning his trousers and bending to pull them off, and then she really looks at him, and there is _a lot_ to look at. 

“Oh, wow,” she says faintly, running her hands over the defined muscles of his torso. It’s a shame to hide these under those over-large brown blazers. It should be, like, against the law or something.

He laughs suddenly.

“I said that last part out loud, didn’t I?”

“You did.” He sets about tugging on her bra straps, seemingly uncertain how to get it off, which reminds her that she’s still mostly dressed.

She giggles at his bafflement. “Here, let me. These are notoriously tricky.” She unhooks the clasps and lets the bra slip down her arms. His lips part as he looks at her breasts, which have never been much to write home about, in her opinion, but he seems more than happy with them.

“May I…?”

“Help yourself,” she says, gesturing at them. He bends and kisses carefully from her collarbone down to one nipple sucking on it as he massages the other with his left hand. She gasps and clutches at his hair. What he lacks in experience, he more than makes up for in sheer enthusiasm.

“Oh fuck, I gotta get my pants off,” she groans. 

He straightens, lips red and wet, grinning. “You enjoyed that?”

“Yeah, I enjoyed it. Like it wasn’t obvious, you butt,” she huffs, unbuttoning her too-tight skinny jeans and shimming out of them and her underwear as fast as she can, which is not very fast. Maybe it’s time for JNCOs to come back in style. Or for her to get into wearing skirts. When she finally pulls her feet free, Michael is watching her with a crooked smile.

She spreads her arms and bows dramatically. “And that was the least impressive escape act in the history of magic. Thank you very much.”

He laughs. “Well, I enjoyed it. What now?” he asks eagerly.

“Um, well how about you lie down?”

He nods and sits on the foot of the bed, scooting back until he’s in the middle of what up until now seemed like a perfectly spacious queen-size. His wings hang off the sides, and even his feet dangle off the end. It’s curiously endearing and more than a little surreal as he waits patiently for her to do something, massive wings flexing absently. She crawls over him, wincing as she puts her knees on feathers, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. Finally, after what seems like a lot of crawling, she makes it to his face, leaning down to kiss him again. He groans and responds immediately this time, replicating every move she showed him before. 

“Put your hands on me,” she breathes. He slides them up her thighs and to her waist, thumbs circling absently against her ribs. She takes his left hand in hers and puts it between her legs, guiding it to show him how she likes to be touched. He’s a quick study, eyes darting between his hand and her face, measuring her reactions. Her eyes slide shut and she grinds back, groping blindly beneath her to find him lying hard and hot against his belly. His whole body tenses when she touches him, stroking experimentally to see what he likes. The answer seems to be...almost everything. He’s delightfully responsive, emitting a litany of gasps and moans and wordless encouragements, his hips thrusting off the bed and into her hand.

“Okay, okay,” she whispers, letting go of him abruptly and positioning herself better on top of him.

“Why did you stop?” he pants, disappointed, grabbing her hand again and moving it back to his cock.

“Because you were gonna come,” she laughs.

“Would that be so bad?”

“Trust me, you’ll thank me later,” she says. “Like, _right_ now.”

She positions him carefully and slides down onto him. He gasps and clutches at the sheets, then at her, hands gripping at her and guiding her further down.

“Oh my g-gosh, you’re big,” she pants when she finally takes him as far as she can, flexing her hips to adjust to his size.

“Ella,” he gasps, squirming beneath her. “I’m not sure I’m going to—”

“Right there with you, buddy,” she replies, fingers rubbing frantically at her clit as she starts to ride him in earnest. 

Michael’s hands quickly go to her hips, helping her move at whatever pace she wants. His head falls back and his wings tense and arch as he gets close, the right one twitching occasionally. Ella takes a gamble and puts her free hand on it, running her fingers through the feathers in one of the least damaged-looking areas, her fingernails grazing the skin beneath.

His eyes fly open and lock on hers for a split second before he comes, pulling her to him in a crushing grip as he shudders beneath her. She manages to keep her hand against her clit and brings herself off a few seconds later, whimpering and falling limp on top of him.

They’re quiet for a long time in the afterglow, tracing aimless patterns on each others’ skin.

“That’s not half-bad, I guess,” he says eventually.

“Willing to admit Lucifer might be onto something?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” A wrinkle appears between his eyebrows as he stares at something behind her. “You’re religious, yes?”

She turns slightly and realizes he’s looking at the crucifix on her wall.

“Well I’d be an idiot not to be now,” she jokes.

“You have faith in my father,” he presses, grim.

“Yes,” she replies softly.

“I don’t, anymore.”

“Why?”

“He created a system that seems to me to be fundamentally unjust, a system I’m complicit in, and he refuses to speak when I ask him to help me understand.” Her heart breaks at the lost expression on his face.

“Sounds a lot like where I was at last year.”

He runs a hand through her hair absently. “And that’s not where you are anymore?”

“No. I decided faith wouldn’t be faith if I understood it all, if there was some kind of clear explanation for all this pain and sadness. Faith is about believing the universe is built on goodness and benevolence. No one creates something from nothing with the intention of doing harm. Creation is an act of hope. I think your father has faith in _us_. And maybe that’s what’s most important.”

He looks at her for a long time in silence.

“Maybe your father wanted you to be here right now, with me,” she says in a small voice.

He grins. “I hope you’re not implying that my father is orchestrating my sex life, because that is a truly horrific thought.”

She slaps him playfully on the chest. “Look at you, Mr. Sex Life!”

He rolls her over in confusion of limbs and feathers and her delighted laughter echoes through the apartment.

That’s the first time, and it’s far from the last.


End file.
